Lives in Cricket No 49 - Enid Bakewell

10 Newstead is still used as a community centre and there is a bar on Saturday evenings and Sunday lunchtimes. Enid explains: ‘The pitheap’s been grassed over and there’s plenty of trees; and of course mining wasn’t a healthy industry – now I’ve joined a walking group and we can walk three days a week if we want to and we went up to Hardwick Hall and they’ve got a miner there holding the lamp where he’s testing for methane gas: but what didn’t happen was they didn’t put in place anything for people when the mines closed so I saw miners grovelling around for bits of coal on what had been lovely fields with a stream running through and cowslips – but you have to move on.’ So today it is a post-industrial landscape. But 60 years ago when young Enid Turton lived in Newstead there was a colliery – one of the highest producing in the country – and a significant railway junction where three lines came together. The trains are partially restored today, with the ‘Robin Hood’ line reopening in the 1990s with trains between Nottingham and Mansfield. Like most villages, Newstead had a cricket club (founded 1969) which continued after the colliery team ended in 1987. But the village team too folded at the beginning of 2013 because of a shortage of players 4 . A club called Nomads, playing in the Bassetlaw & District League, moved from Mansfield at the start of 2014 and uses the Colliery Recreation Ground, though they appear to run just a single men’s team. 4 http://www.chad.co.uk/sport/cricket/newstead-village-in-mourning-over- loss-of-cricket-club-1-5744351